The Tupelos and the Dogwoods 



twigs rise with curious bendings so as to hold their clustering buds 

 into the light. The tree has a picturesque waywardness of habit 

 in the woods: it crouches in the shadows of tall trees, and leans 

 out to reach the sunshine that sifts through the forest cover. 

 The twigs are thickly set with buds, formed in midsummer, for 

 the flowering dogwood is a thrifty, far-sighted tree. The slim 

 leaf buds are inconspicuous among the squat, box-like buds 

 that contain the flowers. 



I need not tell anyone how beautiful a dogwood tree is when 

 the thick cloud of white or pink-flushed blossoms covers its bare 

 branches to their utmost twig. It is a sight to remember to the 

 end of one's days. Perhaps it may seem pedantic, and even 

 unkind, to say here that the beauty of the tree is not in its flowers, 

 but in the four large petal-like scales, or bracts, that surround 

 the greenish bunch of small, tubular, true flowers. In winter 

 these four bracts enfold the flowers. They are the outer envelope 

 of the little flattened and pointed buds. In spring these bud 

 scales do not fall, but grow at an amazing rate. Only the very 

 tips of them are too dry to grow. They form the peculiar notch 

 at the apex, and give the bract an artistic, if rather irregular, 

 twist. 



These bracts are merely leaves changed for the special purpose 

 of notifying the little mining bee, Andrena, and other insects of 

 like appetites, that there is nectar in the flower tubes they guard. 

 Leafy in texture, though white and delicately tinted, these bracts 

 develop before the flowers, and last beyond their fading; so we 

 enjoy the dogwood bloom for weeks in spring instead of days, 

 merely. This is the fact that counts, after all, and the added one 

 that we may go out again and again and bring home sprays of the 

 flowers, and yet leave the tree in better state than it was before, 

 if only we cut judiciously, where the top is thickest. Dogwood 

 trees suffer from lack of pruning; their flowers are stunted by 

 crowding. 



The grace and beauty of the leaves, with their channelled, 

 curving, parallel veins, must strike one in summertime. Before 

 they change colour the clustered fruits, standing where the flowers 

 stood, burn bright against the leafy background. These shining, 

 waxy berries are never lost to view, even when the foliage takes 

 on shades of crimson and scarlet. They deepen and intensify 

 these royal colours until the hungry birds have taken the last one. 



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